Dr Cheng

You can go to realtor.com and find out current listing agents of your condo community, and call each to see if they are "from the town". Get those who are from the town to come doing market analysis, invite 3 to 5, and pick the one can give you the highest estimate.

The reason for realtor living in town is that they can provide your buyers much more info about town, such as school. e.g. if a realtor can tell buyer that his or her son went to all schools in great East Brunswick and got into Ivy league schools, that would help tremendously. Do not get realtor who are from out of town never lived at your town.

The reason you need to pick the highest estimate is because every realtor has 500 to 1000 prospective buyers in their hands, and each one has different network, so the highest one seem to give you the best access to their buyers. e.g. I know a realtor used Jose 732 979-9100 (cell) to distribute 1,000 invitation flyers to prospective buyer community to her open house won Gold Medal of MLS in 2006, and just got another Gold Medal in 2007 (meaning sold over $10millions in the year).

If you are going to sell yourself. You can talk to your neighbors to find out where they moved to your condo community and you may also find out a list of apartments nearby that is called Prospective Buyers Community, and you can get 1,000 invitation flyers to those communities before your open house, and you would be surprised many come to see and buy. - Sat Apr 26 2008, 09:56

In fact, the home prices in some prime locations such at Greater Edison Area near NYC train station already start rising... e.g. Centerplace at Edison next to Middlesex County College jump 20% after their first phase sold out on their 2nd phase.

Also gas price will signal inflation and building cost will inevitably goes up so are price. e.g. when gas price was 80 cents back 90's a 2br 2ba condo costed $80,000 and that's about 100,000 gallons of gas to trade for. Now the gas price went up to $3.50 per gallon, a fair price of 2br 2ba condo in Greater Edison area would be $350,000 (i.e. 100,000 x $3.50)...

It is a matter of US Dollar depreciation, that's why you see around 500 homes sold in Piscataway in 2007 and 1,000 homes sold in Edison in 2007, you will see many other towns start selling well since many people sold their condo/townhouse will move up to buy bigger home, and even several $1.3m houses sold recently in Edison ... - Sat Apr 26 2008, 09:47

Metropark Train Stn is under expansion and soon you will see the parking lots and platform added a lot. for more info on Metropark Train Stn you will find this useful http://metroparktrain.blogspot.com/ - Sat Apr 26 2008, 09:41

If your best school district means SAT scores, then Piscataway High School got 9 students this year obtained full scores. Many students got admitted to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, U Penn, Columbia, Cornell, Standford, Berkeley, ... and I am currently at UC Berkeley since my son just got admitted to UC Berkeley; I took him to join Overnight Host Program ... - Sat Apr 26 2008, 09:37

As far as I know, the townhouses in Greater Edison Area have been stable for past 2 to 3 years. Some units are hot can walk to NYC train moved up some, and others many have more or less depending on the season. New townhouse like Centerplace at Edison moved up more. - Sat Apr 26 2008, 09:30